Be Polite and Say Goodbye
by Addster
Summary: It was almost like dying for them. But they still managed to survive, despite the crushing weight.


**AN: This came to me after reading a few doujinshi online about shinobi leaving Konoha. So take this how you will, inspired by, "A Prophecy" by Asking Alexandria. Enjoy :)**

**Diclaimer: If I owned Naruto, Jiraiya would still be alive and banging Tsunade while making Orochimaru watch...so there. You don't see that happening anytime soon.**

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><p>It was like a war zone where they stood: fallen trees littered the forest turned battleground; the trunks torn open like gutted fish. Bushes were now mounds of ash, grass was gone and all that remained was scorched earth.<p>

The smoke around the two was suffocating, clogging up their throats and sticking in their lungs like tar, constricting the organs. Eyes were stung by the sharp particles of dust floating around in the air, twirling and spinning around them like dancers on an endless stage.

"No…" her breath was heavy as the small word fell from her lips. Blood trickled down along with the two letters like molasses. She felt like she was choking just standing there like an idiot. She wanted to move her bloody hands, she felt like they were about to separate from her body if she didn't use them. Her slender fingers trembled violently, like dead leaves in a torrent of wind.

A mantra of the word, no, the fierce emotion pranced around behind her eyes.

It was no longer a word to her.

"No…" it had become something more, like an extension of her own being. She could feel her heart beating in the word.

"No…" her bottom lip tripped this time, giving away her façade of adjustment.

She gripped the injured man next to her, her hands pressing down on his bloody wounds to staunch the hemorrhaging. He was too occupied with watching her face to notice the severity of his wounds.

His obsidian eyes watched as her lip started quivering harder and harder, how her hands seemed to want to melt in to his being. She was losing it right before his eyes and it killed him.

"He didn't-," she choked on her breath and searched the quiet forest around her, honey eyes frantic as they searched from tree to tree. She snapped her head towards every snap of a twig, every rustle in the leaves, every slap of the breeze.

"You," that's when he felt a tear splash his face, hot and stinging like a tiny knife had impaled him.

Her use of the new pronoun startled him seeing as how the two were alone in the battered forest. All alone, just them and the pain.

She rose from her place on the ground, sitting him up in the process and leaning him on a tree. She moved like a zombie, her mind too far gone to realize she was moving.

In the center of the clearing she stood, her head raised towards the canopy of oak trees and the sky. The already black clouds had started letting loose their heavy payloads on the earth below, smacking the ground with fat round drops of rain.

The scream she let loose was one for the history books. It was loud and strong as it retched itself from her throat. She screamed at the sky, at the raining clouds, at God if she really tried. She screamed at _him_, she screamed at herself, she screamed so hard she started crying.

The horrible battle cry turned to a sputtering pathetic sobbing. Her strong shoulders fell up and down so fast and so hard, he was afraid she would fall apart. And now the hard rain fell on her in sheets bouncing off her and exploding in to smaller drops that sprinkled around her feet. She looked like a ghost in the heavy downpour, not even her silhouette was whole as she faded in and out of his vision.

"_He didn't say goodbye!" _

He lifted his head to watch her, waiting for her to move. But she was statuesque, the only motion coming from her was the heave of her chest from the shouting she had just done.

She suddenly, and very violently stomped her foot down on the ground, splashing mud and water and sent small pebbles flying from the force.

Her hands balled in to shaking white-knuckled fists that quivered at her sides, looking ready to strangle the life out of someone.

He rose, clutching his side as he waddled out to her. She shouldn't be bearing this alone, she shouldn't have to tear her heart out and throw it at the sun because of this. And he knew she would, that's how she was. The world's problems became her own and she cared. Too much in fact, to the point she was suffering now.

"Take my hand," he said as he held his own large hand out, beads of water trickling down his knuckles and hanging on the bottom of his palms.

"I should have known."

Those words seemed to be carving themselves on the flesh of her heart. Deep ugly carving knives left horrible and guilt-ridden scars along the beautiful muscle. The rain was eroding away her soft and loveable features, he could see them crumbling from her small frame. One more shiver and she would be hard and dead, just like _him_.

"We can still survive."

He took her hand and held it in his, gripping her tight to keep her from tearing away. He took a step closer to her and winced as he felt the anger rolling off her in waves. He managed to find her eyes and looked in to them, seeing fields of grain and honey and whiskey floating in her beautiful pools.

He was of understanding and aid; he was there to pick her up when she no longer had the strength to go on, just as she had done for him.

She looked at him in utter agony, finding his reservoir of healing behind his coal eyes.

A sob shook her.

Then another.

And another.

He gripped both of her shoulders and held her so she wouldn't fall to her knees. Her eyes became unfocused and glassy as she sucked in a rickety breath, hands grabbing at anything she could feel.

He gently let her sink, lower in to herself she folded. Like a wax candle had been left out in the heat, she crumpled inwardly and hugged herself like a lonely child. Her breath was ragged as she tried searching her strength to not fall to her knees. The air above her, coupled with the heavy rain, felt like cinderblocks being stacked on her back one by one. Anvils and elephants stomped her lungs and pounced along her ribs and spine. She felt like she was being crushed from all the weight on her shoulders. It had all tumbled the moment he ran from them, cut out their hearts and kicked them in to a fire.

Their brother.

Since they were small children, they had always been together. He had saved their lives as they had saved his. They laughed and cried, held each other's hands and wiped the blood off the other's cheek. She had patched him up, cleaned his wounds and hugged him when he needed it. He joked with him, showed him his fist pair of fairly decent knockers and watched the boy go red in the face. He was there for his friend, his comrade, his brother in everything but blood.

Under his hands, he felt her small body wrack and shiver from the force building in her pit. A rumbling and thundering like the storm clouds above them. Her strong hand gripped the leg of his pant and she pulled herself up to her shaky feet. She thrust her chest out and her head back in another heart-wrenching scream.

"_You never said goodbye!"_

And now he was gone, the rain slowly washing away anything left of him.

Their hearts followed his tracks, pieces of them sinking in to the mud just as his footprints had begun to do.

He was really gone.

Gone forever.

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><p><strong>Brownie points for anyone who knows who I was writing about... :)<strong>

**PEACE :P**


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